1. Field of the Invention
In general, the present invention relates to communications management. Specifically, the present invention relates to a system, method and program product for managing communications such as pursuant to an Information Technology (IT) migration.
2. Related Art
As Information Technology (IT) continues to advance, many organizations are faced with the task of migrating their existing computer infrastructures, telephone systems and the like to newer technology. For example, an organization might wish to migrate its networking functions from token ring to Ethernet. Similarly, an organization might wish to migrate its telephone service from landline-based service to voice-over-IP service. To accomplish the desired migration, an organization will often hire an outside service-provider that will gather needed information and perform the actual migration.
Unfortunately, performing IT migrations such as these this have historically been extremely expensive and labor-intensive processes. Specifically, IT migrations prior to the present invention necessitated numerous physical visits, telephone calls, and individual electronic mail messages for announcements, gathering of information and scheduling the actual migration. Unfortunately, this approach has several problems. For example, a variation in individual's schedules creates problems in gathering the needed information, and often requires several physical visits. In addition, the actual migration is usually delayed since performing the migration typically requires that representatives of the organization be present while the service provider is on site. Still yet, it is time consuming to place telephone calls or send electronic mail messages to every customer to set up an appointment for a visit. Even if mass mailing templates are used, there is no existing system that can manage the communications and between the service provider and the organization. For example, no existing system tracks responses or non-responses, sends follow-up messages with additional instructions based on the data returned with a response, takes appropriate actions to address non-responses, and transfers data contained in the responses to the appropriate databases or applications.
In view of the foregoing, there exists a need for a system, method and program product for managing communications such as pursuant to an IT migration. Specifically, a need exists for a system that is capable of managing messages communicated between an organization and a service provider performing the IT migration such that efficiency is maximized and costs associated with the IT migration are reduced.